Jacob Burns and the Order of the Algorithm #Wattys2017

Chapter 14: The Writing on the Wall

And yet, despite all this beauty and wonder, Ilya and I saw none of it.

All we could see were the hundreds upon hundreds of equations written all over the room, the incoherent ramblings of a man gone mad. Half of it didn't even make any sense. Mathematical symbols I'd never seen before shone upon the walls, going on forever and ever in a jumble of crazed computations and endless equations, but even more unsettling were the scrawled messages scattered amid the madness, as if the author was trying to retain what little sanity he had left in the few repeated phrases. Words like "It's all my fault" and "If only I could have saved her" glistened in the light, and it was clear something terrible was tormenting this man's soul, but it was another phrase that caught my eye. Four simple words that sent a dark shiver down my spine.

The eyes are watching.

I looked up again at the carving on the wall, wondering if the Order could really be watching us right now...

"So," I said after a long, tense silence, "Is this the Divergence sequence you were talking about? How do we go about solving it so we can get this Conduit thing and get the hell out of here?"

"I honestly have no idea what this is," she replied in a faraway voice, her finger tracing the foreign symbols over and over again, "In fact," she added, "I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before..."

We stared in awe for what seemed like an eternity, lost in the madness without any idea where to begin. That was, until I heard a soft whisper next to me and turned to see Ilya pointing towards the doorway we had entered only moments before. There, just above the open arch, was a message written in red.

The truth is never quite as it seems,

But beneath His gaze, All can be seen.

Where all and nothing does collide,

There, you'll find it, in Atom's eye.

"Great, another riddle..." I said with a sigh, thankful I wasn't being chased by an army of synths this time, but it was just one vague hint after another.

"Jeez, your old man sure knew how to beat around a bush. Couldn't he just once be straightforward about these things? I swear, sometimes I can't tell if we've stumbled on a clue or if we're walking headlong into a trap."

"My father?" Ilya asked with a wrinkle between her brow ," Are you sure this was him? No, I don't believe it, he couldn't have. We both saw him in the recording that night and he certainly didn't look mad to me. Unwell, perhaps, but this? This is a bit much, even for him..."

I scoffed.

"This is your father's labratory, isn't it? We found the key in his office, didn't we? I mean, c'mon. Just name one other person who could have done it? Go on, name one."

"I don't know! But I do know that my father wasn't mad!" She blurted out suddenly and I reeled back.

"Okay, okay, calm down..." I conceded before we got into another shouting match, "We can figure this out. Maybe he left it, maybe he didn't, hell maybe the whole thing's just a smokescreen to throw the Order off the trail. Regardless of any of that, it's clear this is a clue meant for you, so let's just put our heads together and solve this thing, alright?"

Ilya took a deep breath before turning back to the wall with a huff, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

Stubborn as always, I thought, but decided it was best to stay silent on the matter.

As we looked over the riddle, it was clear it was trying to tell us where to find this thing, but it didn't make a lick of sense. "Where all and nothing does collide" and "There we'll find it, in Atom's eye"? Where the hell is that? It sounded like a bunch of contradictory nonsense, but it's all we had. As I gazed back up towards the symbol on the wall, it didn't look like much of anything from here, but still, it was worth a shot.